INQUIRY

New York University • College of Arts and Science
Three Strikes and You’re Out: Impact of America’s
“Tough on Crime” Policy
Amber Poon, Politics
Sponsor: Professor Oeindrila Dube, Politics
Over the past two decades, the socio-economic implications
of the Three Strikes law, a mandate to increase
sentences for repeat offenders, have drawn nationwide attention
and raised serious questions about the effectiveness of
mass incarceration. Does the adoption of the Three Strikes
law throughout the United States deter violent and property
crimes? And, has Three Strikes placed fiscal constraints on
education, health and public welfare? The cost-effectiveness
of Three Strikes laws remains widely contested in academic,
political and legal circles, and this project seeks to address
these primary questions by conducting a data-driven, empirical
analysis of all 50 states for years 1984–2011. However, it
is important to understand that states adopted Three Strikes
with slight variations in sentencing guidelines that define
third strike charges and prior convictions included under the
law. To address these differences, unlike previous studies,
this study focuses on a sub-group analysis that contrasts
states according to the political party of their governors. On
average, Republican-led states with Three Strikes in place
have a higher incarcerated population than states with a
democratic or independent governor. However, the increase
in prison population does not result in lower crime rates.
Additionally, the impact on state finances is reflected by the
moderate increase in police protection and slight decrease in
welfare spending. Fortunately, despite the policy’s limited
role in crime prevention, virtually no negative impact on
education and health-hospital expenditure, posited by some
studies, was observed.
I Want to Hold Your Hand: Infant Supported Walking
Raquel Rahmey, Psychology
Sponsor: Professor Karen Adolph, Psychology
This project aims to understand the role of “supported
walking” in the development of independent walking. Before
infants can walk independently, caregivers help infants to
walk by holding their hands or supporting their torsos to
provide the necessary balance control that infants cannot
generate on their own. Although supported walking has been
noted in the literature for nearly a century and is recognized
on major milestone charts, researchers know surprisingly
little about the circumstances in which supported walking
occurs and whether supported walking facilitates, impedes
or is inconsequential to the development of walking. This
project addresses these gaps in the literature by describing
supported walking during free play and examining whether
support differs by infants’ locomotor status (whether crawler
or walker), age, walking skill and whether infants are on
the floor or on an elevation. Preliminary findings show that
caregivers provide younger, less experienced walking infants
with more support than older, more experienced walking
infants. Further analyses will examine how much support
infants receive on elevated surfaces and whether support is
related to how well infants walk. This work may aid health
professionals in using caregiver supported walking as a
tool to aid motor development for infants with disabilities.
The Embodiment of Ethnic and Gender Violence:
Trauma Narratives of Rapes and Other Human Rights
Assaults in May 1998 Indonesian Riots
Artricia Marina Rasyid, Anthropology
Sponsor: Professor Angela Zito, Anthropology
In May of 1998, Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta, was
seized by large-scale riots of mass burning, looting and
rape. To date, scholarship on the riots has emphasized the
racialized nature of the unrest, as the violence was directed
at Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority. Comparatively few
studies have focused on the sexual violence component,
which is considered both a juridical and socio-cultural taboo
in Indonesia. Most mass media documented the riots using a
separatist discourse of the native Indonesian “Us” versus the
Chinese “Others” thereby further discursively framing the
riots as an ethnic conflict. Drawing on anthropological theories
of semiotics and contemporary feminist human rights
debates, this thesis contributes to the still-marginal body of
scholarship on cultural productions created on the subject
of May 1998 riots’ Chinese rape victims. The analysis is
based on fieldwork in Jakarta, during which artistic installations,
films and biographies on May 1998 were engaged;
interviews with human rights activists were conducted;
and the repertoires of activists’ campaign materials were
analyzed. This study contends that artistic, or narrativized
symbols, are laden with a sense of national identity and
unity. It is also argued that May 1998 cultural productions
constitute a project of anamnesis, as they invite Chinese
and non-Chinese alike to reimagine their national destiny
and to reclaim their agency in the wake of ethnocidal and
economic violence. Thus, this project extricates the politics
of narrative circulation and interpretation and gauges the
extent to which artistic and cultural projects on May 1998
riots not only signify memories of suffering but also mobilize
a human rights and political claim about gender equality
and racial solidarity.
Reducing Perceived Political Polarization
Odile Rodrik, Psychology
Sponsor: Professor Tessa West, Psychology
This study examined whether having individuals think
about their conflicting goals would increase their accuracy
in estimating the attitudes of members of a rival political
party. Specifically, this study found that Democrats and
64